Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Hannibal often says “no matter how random things may appear, there's always a plan” (A-Team), it’s true, at least true for those incidents that I ‘m going to write below.. I wanted to dedicate this post to my best buddy who celebrated his birthday last week, but since I was stuck up with one other interesting task I was not able to complete it (and he knows what I would have been doing all day long !! )

So here I go, compiling a bunch of random incidents.. It’s always normal for a guy to take a second look at some one pretty standing right in front of him , and that too in a ATM queue at a large shopping mall. There he was, maneuvering a million plans in his mind, even dreaming like saving her from a bunch of ATM thieves similar to how Vijayakaanth saves India from all those terrorists single handed. As soon as the girl withdrew her money and left the ATM, he lands his foot on the ground and gets reminded of the money that he had to pay for the treat. He goes in, tries to insert his card, but then he notices that she left her card mistakenly, sorry luckily !! Out of those zillion plans finally one has clicked, the ATM was so bright with a white light on his face. He ran unto the security to inform him that ‘someone left their card at the ATM’, although the security agrees to get it back and hand it over to the concerned person, he says “no no, I’ll meet them and I’ll hand it over to them personally”. Then he starts his “Olympic Oattam” to find that girl (if this was a Tamil movie, we could have had a situation song where the whole mall could have danced along with him in search of that girl) So he finally locates her, hands over the card with a sheepish smile mixed with some heroic dialogues. She thanked him and she left immediately, only then he remembers the bill that had to be settled. Checks his wallet just to find that he has missed his ATM card at the same place !! Runs back to the ATM, meets the security and there was this epic scene. He asked him, weren’t you the guy who ran after that girl to return her ATM card ?? He nodded his head as if he was caught trying to steal a public property :P Well I guess, that’s one hell of an introduction :)

7 years back at Tuticorin… It was 6.15 am, when I and my friends were rushing to our Maths tuition (Mr.Sadagopal), We liked his tuition centre for all his double meaning explanations, even if someone bludgeons you, those explanations and formulas would never get out of your head..! We were already late by 15 minutes, and Sir was in a bad mood. He said, “you people pretend as if your board exams were postponed, look at the guy over there.. “ .. It was when all of us turned to look at our Hero.. Yea, he was the guy who used to turn on the lights at 5 – 5.30 am every morning in our tuition center, solved IIT puzzles during his free time and a CSBE district topper. Sir proceeded, “padikura pillai na appdi irukkanum” (if someone were to take their board exams, you’ve to be like him) It was when i met him first, he was from a different school, skinny, tall, very shrewd and had the look of the next district topper. It didnt make much difference in our tuition arrival time, but then we always sat 3 benches behind where he sat :D After a couple of months, we knew each other, we even heard from his friends that he likes a girl. Our mind voices were like“oh :O oh, kallukul eeram eh ! “ .. After our 12th, I studied in IIPE entrance coaching center, where most of his close friends studied with us. And because of these common friends, the bonding became a little more thicker. The results were out, his rank was sky high and he easily got into CEG ~ CS dept as expected. That was the last thing that we heard from him.

There was a internship recruitment program conducted by Microsoft at Adyar this week, someone said in our class, and immediately my classmate said that he wanted to attend it. When he said that, the rest of us asked him like a church choir “and who is that girl ??“ If a guy from our group is willing to attend something like this, its definitely because his gal is attending it. And so we went to give ‘company’ for him. And there, our hero was standing with his classmates, i searched for that big green algo book to be somewhere around him but it wasn’t there. We took the tests, came out of the hall just like coming out of an hour long ethics class. We didn’t even wait for the results to be announced, and we heard that he made it in. Still no big surprise for us, remember that 5 am tubelight switching on at tuitions?

Well after 3.5 years of sulky engineering life, we reached the point that we had been waiting so long. Yes, our campus recruitments !!! MIT guys took their interviews on par with the CEG guys, and yea, it was really tough. Most companies favoured the CEG guys they said, since most of their seniors were already firm footed. Out of one such companies were Google,they forcefully sent all the MIT guys out. It wasn’t a big deal for us, as we got used to this. Usually they allowed us to write the first round and then threw us out, but here we weren’t even allowed to write the first round. (actually the subtle difference between Thorathi adikurathu and Adichi thorathurathu) We came out, dusted our shirts, started taking a couple of snaps with a kerchiefs on our head exactly outside that exam hall and you know.. But by then, our class toppers who were really pissed, came forward and said that we had to take this seriously. I asked them, then you should take it to our HOD, I don’t know what i was thinking when i mentioned her name but the rest of class took that seriously and complained it to her. Yes, I’m the culprit who represented that team, unfortunately the vice Chancellor was there in our campus and this HOD made us talk to him regarding this incident. Vice Chancellor entered the scene like that Naatamai scene Vijayakumar (only difference is, in that movie we had only one guy carrying a “SOMBU” but here there were so many) he cancelled the whole of Google interview claiming that they should included the MIT guys as well, and he sent all the candidates who were shortlisted home. When i narrated the incident while having a tea at our office premises, our hero who was sitting besides me stopped me. He said, “Were you the culprit behind this incident? !”, i answered with an air of a freedom fighter, “yea, it was me and our team”, with a evil grin he retorted, “ i was shortlisted in that Google interview and they cancelled my 4th round because of that vice Chancellor and some asshole who was behind it” ..I understood that he was decently addressing me and I chuckled, “and that answers the part why you are here with me !!” .. no, he said.. !!!

I was like.. why arent you feeling bad about this ?? he explained that they did take all of those short listed candidates unofficially to Hyderabad for attending the remaining interviews, but he didn’t get through. The real comedy has happened after he had returned from his MS internship. Some senior guy had told him, “after MS try attending ‘this’ company alone”. He said he was searching for that guy who gave such an idea to wait and attend only this company. Whoever that senior is, please don’t come to Chennai for another couple of years. Or else he might become TAKEN liam neeson, he’ll find you and he’ll kill you (for sure). We used to tell him, dai you are the 5.15 am tuition guy and you are not supposed to be down like this, you deserve a lot better. He said, “stop, do you know why I came early every day ?”, i was puzzled for a moment and then answered, “yea, you came early to practise those IIT problems isnt it ?”..He laughed for a minute and said, “thats what you think, actually that second bench gal na ”, “who, ***** eh ?”, he nodded.. “For God’s sake you didnt tell a hi to her” i exclaimed, he was perplexed, he asked, “why what’s wrong with her ?”, i continued “ne hi sollirunthae na, kaiyya vettirupaanga” (if u say a hi, then you would hv lost your arm) and then you could have entered CEG in physically challenged quota”.

I don’t know if fate exists but that was purely responsible to have me and him placed together here. Now he is my best friend and remember that I was one of those guys who ruined his Google chances ! Isn’t life is filled with random acts of craziness ??